“It’s a miracle, Bobby!”

Usual surfeit of errands...... I shall recount two of the four.
Actually five were proposed, but I scotched one -a) for lack of a map, and -b) I was running out of time.
The first was to Lori’s Funky Food Market in deepest, darkest Henrietta to pick up a case of Arrowhead Mills puffed-corn cereal I had ordered, 12 six-ounce bags.
Lori’s is about 25 minutes away, and was 20 minutes from the second errand.
I usually delay a Lori’s trip until I’m headed that way, but they were crying that I pick up my order — threats of Armageddon.
A relative in Florida whose opinion I value suggested getting the puffed corn from Amazon online.
So I researched it; $18.65 per case. Lori’s wants $20.40.
So I ordered from Amazon; drop-shipped at my door by Federal Express.
They slapped on a shipping & handling charge of $12.50.
For cryin’ out loud; are they wrapped in gold foil?
That makes the price over $24 per case.
Back to Lori’s!

A while ago my beloved Verizon Motorola RAZR® cellphone got baptized — so long it rendered it inoperable.
I had to get a new phone — made more sense. The RAZR® was no longer available. It’s a Nokia 6205.
The usual techno-wonder that can start your dinner from across the universe.
Overkill, although -a) I have GPS navigation on it, and -b) it can display weather radar.
It also can be a radio phone; what I really like it for. —Freedom from the landline network.
I had a HUGE contact list memorized into my RAZR, and was told I’d lost it, since my baptized phone was inoperable.
I also was told by various siblings RAZRs had a SIM-chip which could be transferred into an operable RAZR, thus saving my contact list, display, etc.
We researched it, and discovered Verizon (“Version”) doesn’t use SIM-chips; not even in RAZRs.
No great loss; my contact list needed reorganization and updating anyway.
Another relative suggested Verizon could store all your contacts on their own servers; so that was the purpose of this errand.
Pull into Verizon (“Version”) store across from Eastview Mall.
“Uh-ohhhhhh......” I think. “This is the store with the ‘pyooter sign-in. Mano-a-mano with ‘pyooter sign-in.”
“May I help you, sir?” Thankfully accosted by a real human-being. No ‘pyooter sign-in.
“What I’d like to do is transfer all my contacts on this cellphone to the great Verizon ‘pyooter-in-the-sky.”
“Oh; our servers,” he answered. “What you need is ‘backup assistant.’ You can get it free from your MyVerizon account. Do you have a MyVerizon account?”
“Ya mean I could do it from that? I wondered about that.”
He grabbed my phone: “menu,” then “tools-on-the-go,” then “get new applications.”
“Do it from your MyVerizon account and ya get ‘backup assistant’ for free.”
He continues madly fingering buttons, brings up my MyVerizon account, and then cranks in a magical skeleton password — not mine, but works.
BAM! He downloads “Backup Assistant” onto my phone, and then backs up all my contacts to the great Verizon ‘pyooter in the sky.
“It’s a miracle, Bobby!” A techno-geek that doesn’t lord over you about stupidity and cluelessness.
“What if I keep adding contacts? I keep adding contacts almost every day.”
“Just keep backing up with ‘backup assistant;’ it’s automatic.”
I get home; I fire up “backup assistant.”
“Do ya wanna back up?”
BAM! “You don’t have any additional contacts to back up........”

• “The funky-food-market” is Lori’s Natural Foods, south of Rochester in Henrietta — a source for salt-free cereal, sauce, etc.
• “Deepest, darkest Henrietta” is a rather effusive and obnoxious suburb south of Rochester.
• “We” is my wife of 41+ years and I. Like me she’s retired, but her last job was as a computer programmer.
• RE: “Various siblings......” —The one who noisily told me RAZRs had a SIM-chip, was my all-knowing, blowhard brother-from-Boston, the macho ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say; and tells me I’m stupid and clueless. —I have other siblings that claim superiority. (I’m the oldest, and not REPUBLICAN.) He’s also the one that mispronounces Verizon.
• “Eastview Mall” is a large shopping mall southeast of Rochester.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• “It’s a miracle, Bobby!” is something my born-again Christian mother said regarding answers to her prayers. —I once had a John Deere riding lawnmower I had to cut the battery-cable on, so I couldn’t use it. I kept hoping for a miracle, but had to fix it myself.